ALL BLOGGERZ ARE BROTHERZ!!

Keep your title tags short and pertinent

2008-11-14T07:44:00.000-08:00

The title tag (the description that appears on the top of the browser) of your site is one of the most important factors determining the search engine results position (SERP).

There are two common mistakes, however, the people commit when creating the title tag. The first one is to use a single title, usually the blog name, for all the pages throughout the site. This must be avoided because the title of a page should match the content inside it.

Suppose you are using the title “John Doe’s Blog” on all the pages. Even if you have a post talking about “The New PlayStation 3″ the title tag for this post will be “John Doe’s Blog”, which is not very effective (because there is no match on the keywords). A much better title would be “The New PlayStation 3″, that is exactly equal to the post name rather than the blog name.

The second mistake that people commit is to include too many keywords on the title tag, hoping that search engines will take all of them into consideration. Have you ever seen a title like this: “Tech Blog - where you find resources for blogs, websites, technology, internet, applications, software, hardware, and pretty much everything else!”

This should also be avoided because search engines put a value on title keywords depending on the total number of keywords. The result is that the higher the number of keywords you have on the title the smaller the value that will be attributed to each one of them.

A good title tag, therefore, should be short (no more than 4 or 5 keywords) and pertinent to the content inside the page.

Update: You can find the actual code I use on the article “Optimal Title Tag for Wordpress“.

Always use the ALT tag

2008-11-14T07:43:00.000-08:00

The ALT tag, sometimes referred as the alternative tag, goes inside image codes to tell search engines what the image is about. An example of an ALT tag is:

Many people forget to add the ALT tag to images, and some ignore it altogether. This is a mistake because the ALT tag is used by search engines not only to identify images but also for keyword density purposes.

The next time you place an image on your site do not forget to add the ALT tag with a couple of keywords pertinent to the image and to the content of the page.

Update: Equally important is the title tag inside the image code, some browsers (including some versions of Firefox) will not take into consideration the ALT tag, therefore having a title tag should make you more secure.

SEO techniques to be avoided

2008-11-14T07:42:00.002-08:00

The Google Blogoscoped blog has an interesting article covering the basics of search engine optimization. There are some basic guidelines for making your blog more search engine friendly, with tips about writing original stuff, making the posts accessible and spreading the word about your site.

The most useful part, however, is the final checklist on SEO techniques that should be avoided, check it out:

Don’t stuff too many keywords into places where they don’t belong
Don’t optimize for search engines at the cost of human visitors; if someone told you adding a dash to the domain name helps your rankings, but you feel that dash might confuse your customers, then don’t add it
Don’t trust people who promise you “instant #1 ranking”, “guaranteed top 10 positions” or anything of the sort
Don’t link to others from your site just because they promised a link back to you
Don’t link to others just because they paid you, unless you know exactly what you’re doing (i.e. you know about “bad neighborhoods” the “nofollow” attribute, PageRank, JavaScript-ads vs text links, what it means to get googleaxed and so on)
Don’t create multiple pages with exactly the same content
Don’t “litter” your URL on other people’s sites (and don’t let others people “litter” URLs on your site; if you have a web forum, keep it spam-free)
Don’t invest in a cheap server that won’t be able to cope with your traffic; don’t build your whole site on free website tools only – if you want to have a high-quality site & server, you need to pay for it
Don’t worry about a page’s meta descriptions, meta keywords and such; your time is better spent creating content
Don’t use tools that automatically submit your site’s URL to directories, search engines and such
Don’t present different content to search engines than you present to users; for example, don’t hide your text to visitors and show it to search engines
Don’t “over-optimize”; relax, if search engines required webmasters to heavily optimize, they’d be doing a very bad job
In general, don’t try to outsmart search engines (unless perhaps you intend to dedicate your life to that task); those maintaining search engines are paid to outsmart webmaster tricks, so in the long run, chances for successful tricks are low

Optimize your Meta Description Tag

2008-11-14T07:42:00.001-08:00

The Meta Description Tag (placed between the head and /head tags) is used by some search engines to create the snippets of text that you see right below the results on search queries. It does not carry any weight in the search algorithm of Google, but it does carry a certain weight for Yahoo and other smaller search engines so you should not neglect it altogether.

One problem with the Meta Description Tag of most websites is that it is static. People usually include a general description about the site, which is suitable only to the home page. Should a visitor find an internal page (say a single post) through a search engine the tag will be the same, containing no information about the content of that internal page whatsoever.

In order to optimize your Meta Description Tag you should make it dynamic, making sure that it will include the first few lines of text of every single page on your site. A very simple way to do this under the Wordpress platform is to make the Description tag equal to the post excerpt, like the code below illustrates.

" />

Alternatively you can download a plugin called Head META Description. Just upload the plugin, activate it and insert the following line on your header:

The plugin will generate the Meta Description automatically, either by extracting the first words of your posts or by displaying the post excerpt (you can configure it).

How to setup a 301 Redirect

2008-11-14T07:41:00.000-08:00

The “301 Permanent Redirect” is the most efficient and search engine friendly method for redirecting websites. You can use it in several situations, including:

to redirect an old website to a new address
to setup several domains pointing to one website
to enforce only one version of your website (www. or no-www)
to harmonize a URL structure change

There are several ways to setup a 301 Redirect, below I will cover the most used ones:

PHP Single Page Redirect

In order to redirect a static page to a new address simply enter the code below inside the index.php file.

header("HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently"); header("Location: http://www.newdomain.com/page.html"); exit(); ?>

PHP Canonical Redirect

The Canonical 301 Redirect will add (or remove) the www. prefixes to all the pages inside your domain. The code below redirects the visitors of the http://domain.com version to http://www.domain.com.

if (substr($_SERVER['HTTP_HOST'],0,3) != ‘www’) { header(’HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently’); header(’Location: http://www.’.$_SERVER['HTTP_HOST'] .$_SERVER['REQUEST_URI']); } ?>

Apache .htaccess Singe Page Redirect

In order to use this method you will need to create a file named .htaccess (not supported by Windows-based hosting) and place it on the root directory of your website, then just add the code below to the file.

Redirect 301 /old/oldpage.htm /new/http://www.domain.com/newpage.htm

Apache .htaccess Canonical Redirect

Follow the same steps as before but insert the code below instead (it will redirect all the visitors accessing http://domain.com to http://www.domain.com)

Options +FollowSymlinks RewriteEngine on rewritecond %{http_host} ^domain.com [nc] rewriterule ^(.*)$ http://www.domain.com/$1 [r=301,nc]

ASP Single Page Redirect

This redirect method is used with the Active Server Pages platform.

<% Response.Status="301 Moved Permanently" Response.AddHeader='Location','http://www.new-url.com/' %>

ASP Canonical Redirect

The Canonical Redirect with ASP must be located in a script that is executed in every page on the server before the page content starts.

<% If InStr(Request.ServerVariables("SERVER_NAME"),"www") = 0 Then Response.Status="301 Moved Permanently" Response.AddHeader "Location","http://www." & Request.ServerVariables("HTTP_HOST") & Request.ServerVariables("SCRIPT_NAME") End if %>

Gather .edu and .gov backlinks

2008-11-14T07:40:00.001-08:00

It is widely accepted that .edu and .gov backlinks carry a larger weight for search engine algorithms. Despite the fact that Google has never admitted it (sometimes it even neglected) most SEO and online marketing experts would confirm that .edu and .gov links outperform other extensions in terms of search ranking juice. There are several ways to collect those links, below I will explain two of them, depending on whether your blog has relevant content to educational and governmental websites or not.

Blogs with relevant content

The first step to get some .edu and .gov backlinks pointing to your website is to locate sites related to your topic ending with those extensions. Using the Google operator site:.edu and site:.gov combined with the keywords of your blog should enable you to find an extensive list of such sites.

site:.edu "keyword 1"

site:.gov "keyword 1"

Once you have a list of sites explore them and select the ones you think would have a higher probability of sharing some external links with your blog. Finally contact the webmaster of those sites and point them to the content on your blog that could be relevant and valuable to those sites. It is always a good idea to link first to the sites before asking the backlink.

Blogs without relevant content

If your blog does not have content that could be relevant or valuable to educational and governmental websites your should look for types of sites that allow users to create a backlink without interacting with the webmaster, and the most common types of those sites are blogs and online forums.

Again you can use the Google operators to generate a list of such sites. Notice that the site:.edu argument limits the search results to sites with a .edu extension while the inurl:blog attribute ensures that results will have the word blog on the URL structure.

site:.edu inurl:blog "keyword 1"

site:.edu inurl:forum "keyword 1"

site:.gov inurl:blog "keyword 1"

site:.gov inurl:forum "keyword 1"

Finally track down the sites with discussions relevant to the topic of your blog and join the conversation, leaving a backlink to your site either through the comment section or on inside a forum thread. Bear in mind that you should not spam those sites for the sake of getting as many backlinks as possible. Make sure that you are adding useful information and not just polluting the online environment.

Update: Check out the “Enhanced” version of those search queries.

SEO Clinic : Submit Your Site for SEO Advice

2008-11-14T07:38:00.001-08:00

SEO Clinic is a new project we are now offering on Search Engine Journal for webmasters and site owners which are not experiencing their desired or potential Google, Yahoo, Ask.com and MSN rankings.

Every week our group of SEO experts will band together and lend our expertise to help one lucky selected site with their SEO. We will publish our tips for your site on each Tuesday.

SEO Clinic is a free service and our recommendations will include ideas and tips on link building, site navigation, usability, copywriting, social media optimization and other techniques which help web sites rank higher for desired terms in search engines.

In the tradition of SES’s Pimp My Site sessions and Pronet’s Pimp My Links, we’re also going to Pimp Your SEO with our staff of Resident Pimps of the SEO Clinic:

Loren Baker : I’ve been involved in SEO for almost 10 years and my specializations are in basic on-site content oriented SEO, meta data, link building, local search, news & blog search optimization and social news marketing.
Carsten Cumbrowski :Carsten tends to lean more to the technical side of SEO, building affiliate sites, working with content management systems & databases, supplemental results, and even dabs in the grey hat on occasion.
Jessica Bowman :Jessica is also a long time SEO expert and her focus is on usability, driving conversions and reeling in users.
Garrett French : Garrett’s strengths are in SEO copywriting and social media optimization. Mr. French is currently starting a new company, so his time is sparse, yet his insight is valuable.
Ahmed Bilal :Ahmed is another SEO and Search Marketing specialist with expertise in professional blogging, link baiting and link building.
Rhea Drysdale : Rhea, the newest Resident Pimp, focuses on merging SEO, Paid Search, Social Media Optimization, content development, split testing and Public Relations initiatives all into one fine and effective SEO campaign.
Gemme van Hasselt : Gemme is an Internet Marketing Consultant who lives in Shanghai and specializes in SEO. With his base in China and International background, Gemme can lend some outside gathering of the box ideas to SEO campaigns.

SEO Clinic will also bring in Special Guests from time to time, some of them being the most respected names in SEO, and some being SEO Beasts who fly under the radar, but really know their stuff.

So, we’re sitting on a collective mosaic of vast SEO and Search Marketing knowledge. If you’re site is in need of basic SEO, link building, traffic building or gathering more targeted conversions, being pimped by the SEO Clinic is just what the doctor ordered.

To participate in Search Engine Journal’s free SEO Clinic, simply contact us with your site information and SEO needs below. If we choose your site for this project, we will contact you immediately.

Optimal URL Structure

2008-11-14T07:37:00.000-08:00

Having an optimal URL structure for your website straight from the beginning is very important, both because it will attract more readers and because it will be really difficult to change it afterwards.

An optimal URL structure will not use numbers or strange characters on the permalinks, it will be short and describe the content of the page.

Here is an example of a poor URL structure:

http://www.domain.com/2007/02/17/archives/p=?2176

Here is an example of an efficient URL structure:

http://www.domain.com/post-title/

An optimal URL structure will be more user friendly and it will also improve your search engine rankings. Most search engines, in fact, give a high weight for keywords present on the URL structure.

Wordpress users can set an optimal URL structure by going into the Control Panel, then Options, then Permalinks. After you check the “Custom” structure and insert “/%postname%/” as a custom structure. This will make your permalinks display the post title right after the domain name.

Apply for the SEO Clinic

2008-11-14T07:36:00.002-08:00

The Search Engine Journal started a new project called SEO Clinic. They will basically select one blog every week and optimize it. The tips and advice will include link building techniques, site navigation, usability, copywriting, social media optimization and more.

The project is a free service, and considering the expertise of those guys I guess that it could be worth even for established sites. You can candidate your blog for the SEO Clinic through the contact form on the website.

Remove the hyperlink from single post titles

2008-11-14T07:36:00.001-08:00

Most blog templates present hyperlinks on the titles of single post pages. There is no reason to have an hyperlink on those titles, however, since they are pointing exactly to the current page. Secondly, the hyperlink might also cause some crawling problems for search engines, messing with the indexation of those pages.

Wordpress users can remove this hyperlink by going into the Theme Editor and looking for the single.php file. Inside that file look for the line that specifies the title on the single post pages, it should be something like this:

`">`

Once you find the line you will need to remove the parts that make the title an active link, which include the "> and tags. The final line should look like this:

If you still want to include an hyperlink to make it easier for people to copy the permalink you can place an icon near to the title, or a meta data below the post with the permalink information.

How Google Ranks Blogs

2008-11-14T07:35:00.000-08:00

Google Blog Search is a new tool that is gaining popularity on the Internet lately. The Blog Search might also be a good source of visitors if your blog rank on the first positions for specific keywords, but what factors does Google take into account to elaborate the search results?

The “Seo by the Sea” blog has an interesting article analyzing a new patent from Google that contains some indicators about the positive and negative factors affecting blog ranking, check it out:

Positive Factors:

Popularity of the blog (RSS subscriptions)
Implied popularity (how many clicks search results get)
Inclusion in blogrolls
Inclusion in “high quality” blogrolls
Tagging of posts (also from users)
References to the blog by sources other than blogs
Pagerank

Negative Factors:

Predictable frequency of posts (short bursts of posts might indicate spam)
Content of the blog does not match content of the feed
Content includes spam keywords
Duplicated content
Posts have all the same size
Link distribution of the blog
Posts primarily link to one page or site

Search Engine Ranking Factors

2008-11-14T07:34:00.000-08:00

It is always a good idea to be updated on the factors that search engines use to determine search results and rank websites. SEOMoz released a very detailed document titled “Search Engine Ranking Factors V2”, which outlines the views of 34 SEO experts regarding how Google’s algorithm works. Below you will find the Top 5 positive and negative factors on the study:

Top 5 Positive Factors

Keyword Use in Title Tag
Global Link Popularity of Site
Anchor Text of Inbound Link
Link Popularity within the Site
Age of Site

Top 5 Negative Factors

Server is Often Inaccessible to Bots
Content Very Similar or Duplicate of Existing Content on the Index
External Links to Low Quality/Spam sites
Participation in Link Schemes or Actively Selling Links
Duplicate Title/Meta Tags on Many Pages

NoFollow Feedburner Feed Links?

2008-11-14T07:32:00.000-08:00

Inserting the rel=’nofollow’ tag within links will inform Google and other search engines that they should not follow that link (i.e. not sharing the link love). Most of the times using this attribute is a bad idea because it will remove the value of external links, like in the Wikipedia case.

What about the links pointing to your Feedburner feed (http://feeds.feedburner.com/yourfeed)? Feedburner provides an outstanding service and they do deserve recognition, but could a rel=’nofollow’ tag on those links have some benefits?

First of all many blogs have their Feedburner feed page ranking higher on search engines than the blog itself for most keywords. This is not optimal since a potential reader might end up visiting the feed page and not visiting the blog at all.

Secondly, provided you publish full feeds, the Feedburner feed page will also have the same content of your Homepage, possibly resulting on duplicate content penalties.

Inserting a nofollow tag on the feed links could resolve the first problem and improve the second one, specially if your feed links are sitewide and your blog has a high Pagerank.

Update: Marketing Pilgrim has a post with more suggestions for this issue.

Use Post Excerpts Everywhere

2008-11-14T07:31:00.000-08:00

Google and other search engines penalize sites that have duplicated content. That refers not only to two different sites with the same content but also for a single website that has the same content repeated on many different internal pages.

Once you publish a post on your blog this content will be indexed from the single post page. Many templates, however, will also publish that same post on several other pages like category pages, yearly archives, monthly archives, daily archives, search results and so on.

In order to make sure that you are not incurring any penalty for duplicated content you should make all those pages display only post excerpts instead of full posts. You could even display post excerpts on the Homepage, but make sure your readers would be fine with that first (read more about this on the article “Post Excerpts on the Homepage?”).

The first thing you need to do is to check whether your theme is displaying full posts on the wrong places. Check the category pages, run a search to see how results are displayed and check all the archive pages (add a /2007/ to your blog address and see how the posts are displayed).

If your blog is displaying full posts on pages other than the single post page you will need to fix that. Wordpress themes usually have the index.php or archive.php file governing how posts are displayed (but could another file). You are looking for something like this:

Once you find that file you will need to identify where the Wordpress Loop starts, which is something like this:

Inside the Loop there is a line making your theme display full posts:

We could just change the line above with the code for post excerpts, but that would make the exercpts to be displayed everywhere including on the Homepage and on the single post pages.

The solution is to use IF clauses to make sure that only specific pages will display excerpts. Basically you want to create an IF for every page type that is supposed to display excerpts, and at the end you will insert an ELSE to make sure that all other pages will display full posts. Here is how the code will look like:

Google PageRank Update

2008-11-14T07:28:00.000-08:00

Google is updating the PageRank scores as you read this. What is PageRank? According to Google:

PageRank relies on the uniquely democratic nature of the web by using its vast link structure as an indicator of an individual page’s value. In essence, Google interprets a link from page A to page B as a vote, by page A, for page B. But, Google looks at considerably more than the sheer volume of votes, or links a page receives; for example, it also analyzes the page that casts the vote. Votes cast by pages that are themselves “important” weigh more heavily and help to make other pages “important.” Using these and other factors, Google provides its views on pages’ relative importance.

Notice that in reality what is being updated is the toolbar score, which is the value that you see through the Google toolbar when visiting websites. The “internal” Pagerank, the one used for ranking websites on the search results, is actually constantly updated. You can read more about this topic on a very detailed article from Search Engine Land titled “What is Google PageRank? A Guide for Searchers and Webmasters.”

By the way if you want to check what Pagerank your website will receive you can use the Live Pagerank online tool, it looks like Daily Blog Tips will become a PR 5.

Gather .edu and .gov backlinks (enhanced)

2008-11-14T07:26:00.001-08:00

Sometime ago I wrote the article “Gather .edu and .gov backlinks” where I argued that, despite the lack of official documentation, most SEO experts agree that .edu and .gov backlinks do carry a higher value for search engines.

If you are looking to increase your search engine juice, therefore, it could be a good idea to collect some of those backlinks. On the article I described a simple search query that could be used to find blogs with .edu or .gov extensions:

site:.edu inurl:blog “keyword″

The only problem with that query is that it will return all the .edu blogs with the specified keyword, including the ones where comments are closed or where you must be logged in order to post a comment.

Using a couple of Google operators we can exclude those blogs from the results, making the whole process much more efficient.

site:.edu inurl:blog “comment” -”you must be logged in” -”posting closed” -”comment closed” “keyword”

Bear in mind that you should not post meaningless comments just for the sake of getting a backlink. Always try to add value and contribute to the discussion, otherwise you will just be polluting the blogosphere.

SEO Checklist

2008-11-14T07:22:00.000-08:00

The WebConfs website has a very useful list of “Best and Worst Practices for Designing a High Traffic Website.” Basically they collected all the major factors that might affect the search optimization of your site, attributing a score to them. The score ranges from -3, which is very bad for your site, to +3, which is very good. Below you will find a summary of the most important factors:

Keywords

Keyword in title tag (+3)
Keyword in URL (+3)
Keyword density in document (+3)
Keyword in H1 and H2 headings (+3)
Keyword in the beginning of document (+2)
Keyword in ALT tags (+2)
Keyword in Meta tags (+1)
Keyword stuffing (-3)

Meta Tags

Description Meta Tag (+1)
Keywords Meta Tag (+1)
Refresh Meta Tag (-1)

Content

Unique content (+3)
Frequent updates (+3)
Age of content (+2)
Poor coding or design (-2)
Invisible text (-3)
Doorway pages (-3)
Duplicate content (-3)

Other factors

Site accessibility (+3)
Sitemap (+2)
Site size (+2)
Site age (+2)
Top-level domain (+1)
URL length (0)
Hosting downtime (-1)
Flash (-2)
Misused Redirects (-3)

Yahoo’s Robots-Nocontent Tag

2008-11-14T07:21:00.000-08:00

Most bloggers make use of SEO techniques like robots.txt, nofollow links, and AdSense section targeting to properly direct (or block) the attention of search engines. Earlier this month, Yahoo unveiled the newest addition to this list with the introduction of robots-nocontent.

This new attribute allows bloggers and webmasters to deemphasize areas of a page as irrelevant content. All you do is add class=”robots-nocontent” to your HTML like so:

Navigation, menus, boilerplate text, ads, etc.

Putting this in place gives Yahoo the signal that the marked sections should not be factored in for ranking purposes. Instead, only the unique, relevant content on your pages is counted in the algorithm. Yahoo gets a more polished index and uses less bandwidth; you get higher and more relevant rankings. Everyone wins.

Keep in mind, though, that robots-nocontent has yet to be publicly adopted by the other search engines, particularly Google, so it won’t do anything to help your non-Yahoo rankings. It’s doubtful that using it would do any harm, however, and Yahoo is still the internet’s #2 search engine, so using robots-nocontent is still a good idea from an SEO standpoint.

Top 7 SEO Blogs

2008-11-14T07:19:00.000-08:00

After seeing Adam’s list of blogs for creative writers and noticing an SEO blog, I couldn’t resist the temptation to put together my own list of must-read SEO blogs. Whether or not the industry has a bad reputation among bloggers, staying abreast of search engine news can give your blog a real edge over the competition. What can I say; I can’t help but defend my profession.

Here’s my rundown of the top seven SEO blogs (ordered alphabetically; it’s really hard to rank them against each other for such a broad category).

* Bruce Clay, Inc. Blog - Bruce is an old name in the industry. His blog is a great resource for SEO news and tips in general. What keeps me coming back, though, are the hilarious in-post comment wars he has with Susan. Think we could do something like that, Daniel?
* Marketing Pilgrim - Andy Beal’s got some great material on a variety of different marketing-related topics, including a lot of articles on SEO and blogging.
* Matt Cutts: Gadgets, Google, and SEO - There’s nothing quite like getting news straight from the source. Matt works for Google. He’s a great read to begin with, but you just can’t beat his blog for authority when it comes to the internet’s #1 search engine.
* Search Engine Land - Although the blog itself has only been around for a few months, Danny Sullivan has been an SEO bigwig for much longer.
* Search Engine Roundtable - If you want to stay abreast of conversations on the hottest SEO discussion boards (e.g. Cre8asite, WebmasterWorld, DigitalPoint, etc.) without, well, having to read them, this blog is your first stop.
* Search Engine Watch - This blog is definitely one of the oldest and most respected sources for search engine news. It’s a bit drier than the others; good for information, bad for personality, but still useful if all you’re interested in are the facts.
* SEOmoz Daily SEO Blog - Rand Fishkin and co. provide some great information. Be sure not to miss their whiteboard fridays.

The way I see it, as a blogger, you can hate SEO professionals for their methods or learn from their success. And since you can’t beat them (they rank too well for that), you might as well join them. ;)

Update: This is Daniel writing. While the blogs that Stephen listed are certainly awesome, I think that there are 3 missing: PronetAdvertising, Search Engine Journal and SEO Blackhat. Make sure to check them out as well!

Collection of Robots.txt Files

2008-11-14T07:12:00.000-08:00

The implementation of a suitable robots.txt file is very important for search engine optimization. There is plenty of advice around the Internet for the creation of such files (if you are looking for an introduction on this topic read “Creat a robots.txt file“), but what if instead of looking at what people say we could look at what people do?

That is what I did, collecting the robots.txt files from a wide range of blogs and websites. Below you will find them.

Key Takeaways

Only 2 out of 30 websites that I checked were not using a robots.txt file
Even if you don’t have any specific requirements for the search bots, therefore, you probably should use a simple robots.txt file
Most people stick to the “User-agent: *” attribute to cover all agents
The most common “Disallowed” factor is the RSS Feed
Google itself is using a combination of closed folders (e.g., /searchhistory/) and open ones (e.g., /search), which probably means they are treated differently
A minority of the sites included the sitemap URL on the robots.txt file

The Minimalistic Guys

Problogger.net

User-agent: *
Disallow:

Marketing Pilgrim

User-agent: *
Disallow:

Search Engine Journal

User-agent: *
Disallow:

Matt Cutts

User-agent: *
Allow:
User-agent: *
Disallow: /files/

Pronet Advertising

User-agent: *
Disallow: /mt
Disallow: /*.cgi$

TechCrunch

User-agent: *
Disallow: /*/feed/
Disallow: /*/trackback/

The Structured Ones

Online Marketing Blog

User-agent: Googlebot
Disallow: */feed/

User-agent: *
Disallow: /Blogger/
Disallow: /wp-admin/
Disallow: /stats/
Disallow: /cgi-bin/
Disallow: /2005x/

Shoemoney

User-Agent: Googlebot
Disallow: /link.php
Disallow: /gallery2
Disallow: /gallery2/
Disallow: /category/
Disallow: /page/
Disallow: /pages/
Disallow: /feed/
Disallow: /feed

Scoreboard Media

User-agent: *
Disallow: /cgi-bin/

User-agent: Googlebot
Disallow: /category/
Disallow: /page/
Disallow: */feed/
Disallow: /2007/
Disallow: /2006/
Disallow: /wp-*

SEOMoz.org

User-agent: *
Disallow: /blogdetail.php?ID=537
Disallow: /blog?page
Disallow: /blog/author/
Disallow: /blog/category/
Disallow: /tracker
Disallow: /ugc?page
Disallow: /ugc/author/
Disallow: /ugc/category/

Wolf-Howl

User-agent: *
Disallow: /cgi-bin/
Disallow: /images/
Disallow: /noindex/
Disallow: /privacy-policy/
Disallow: /about/
Disallow: /company-biographies/
Disallow: /press-media-room/
Disallow: /newsletter/
Disallow: /contact-us/
Disallow: /terms-of-service/
Disallow: /terms-of-service/
Disallow: /information/comment-policy/
Disallow: /faq/
Disallow: /contact-form/
Disallow: /advertising/
Disallow: /information/licensing-information/
Disallow: /2005/
Disallow: /2006/
Disallow: /2007/
Disallow: /2008/
Disallow: /2009/
Disallow: /2004/
Disallow: /*?*
Disallow: /page/
Disallow: /iframes/

John Chow

sitemap: http://www.johnchow.com/sitemap.xml

User-agent: *
Disallow: /cgi-bin/
Disallow: /go/
Disallow: /wp-admin/
Disallow: /wp-includes/
Disallow: /author/
Disallow: /page/
Disallow: /category/
Disallow: /wp-images/
Disallow: /images/
Disallow: /backup/
Disallow: /banners/
Disallow: /archives/
Disallow: /trackback/
Disallow: /feed/

User-agent: Googlebot-Image
Allow: /wp-content/uploads/

User-agent: Mediapartners-Google
Allow: /

User-agent: duggmirror
Disallow: /

Smashing Magazine

Sitemap: http://www.smashingmagazine.com/sitemap.xml

User-agent: Mediapartners-Google*
Disallow:

User-agent: *
Disallow: /styles/
Disallow: /inc/
Disallow: /tag/
Disallow: /cc/
Disallow: /category/

User-agent: MSIECrawler
Disallow: /

User-agent: psbot
Disallow: /

User-agent: Fasterfox
Disallow: /

User-agent: Slurp
Crawl-delay: 200

Gizmodo

User-Agent: Googlebot
Disallow: /index.xml$
Disallow: /excerpts.xml$
Allow: /sitemap.xml$
Disallow: /*view=rss$
Disallow: /*?view=rss$
Disallow: /*format=rss$
Disallow: /*?format=rss$
Sitemap: http://gizmodo.com/sitemap.xml

Lifehacker

User-Agent: Googlebot
Disallow: /index.xml$
Disallow: /excerpts.xml$
Allow: /sitemap.xml$
Disallow: /*view=rss$
Disallow: /*?view=rss$
Disallow: /*format=rss$
Disallow: /*?format=rss$
Sitemap: http://lifehacker.com/sitemap.xml

The Mainstream Media

Wall Street Journal

User-agent: *
Disallow: /article_email/
Disallow: /article_print/
Disallow: /PA2VJBNA4R/
Sitemap: http://online.wsj.com/sitemap.xml

ZDNet

User-agent: *
Disallow: /Ads/
Disallow: /redir/
# Disallow: /i/ is removed per 190723
Disallow: /av/
Disallow: /css/
Disallow: /error/
Disallow: /clear/
Disallow: /mac-ad
Disallow: /adlog/
# URS per bug 239819, these were expanded
Disallow: /1300-
Disallow: /1301-
Disallow: /1302-
Disallow: /1303-
Disallow: /1304-
Disallow: /1305-
Disallow: /1306-
Disallow: /1307-
Disallow: /1308-
Disallow: /1309-
Disallow: /1310-
Disallow: /1311-
Disallow: /1312-
Disallow: /1313-
Disallow: /1314-
Disallow: /1315-
Disallow: /1316-
Disallow: /1317-

NY Times

# robots.txt, www.nytimes.com 6/29/2006
#
User-agent: *
Disallow: /pages/college/
Disallow: /college/
Disallow: /library/
Disallow: /learning/
Disallow: /aponline/
Disallow: /reuters/
Disallow: /cnet/
Disallow: /partners/
Disallow: /archives/
Disallow: /indexes/
Disallow: /thestreet/
Disallow: /nytimes-partners/
Disallow: /financialtimes/
Allow: /pages/
Allow: /2003/
Allow: /2004/
Allow: /2005/
Allow: /top/
Allow: /ref/
Allow: /services/xml/

User-agent: Mediapartners-Google*
Disallow:

YouTube

# robots.txt file for YouTube

User-agent: Mediapartners-Google*
Disallow:

User-agent: *
Disallow: /profile
Disallow: /results
Disallow: /browse
Disallow: /t/terms
Disallow: /t/privacy
Disallow: /login
Disallow: /watch_ajax
Disallow: /watch_queue_ajax

Bonus

Google

User-agent: *
Allow: /searchhistory/
Disallow: /news?output=xhtml&
Allow: /news?output=xhtml
Disallow: /search
Disallow: /groups
Disallow: /images
Disallow: /catalogs
Disallow: /catalogues
Disallow: /news
Disallow: /nwshp
Disallow: /?
Disallow: /addurl/image?
Disallow: /pagead/
Disallow: /relpage/
Disallow: /relcontent
Disallow: /sorry/
Disallow: /imgres
Disallow: /keyword/
Disallow: /u/
Disallow: /univ/
Disallow: /cobrand
Disallow: /custom
Disallow: /advanced_group_search
Disallow: /advanced_search
Disallow: /googlesite
Disallow: /preferences
Disallow: /setprefs
Disallow: /swr
Disallow: /url
Disallow: /default
Disallow: /m?
Disallow: /m/search?
Disallow: /wml?
Disallow: /wml/search?
Disallow: /xhtml?
Disallow: /xhtml/search?
Disallow: /xml?
Disallow: /imode?
Disallow: /imode/search?
Disallow: /jsky?
Disallow: /jsky/search?
Disallow: /pda?
Disallow: /pda/search?

Top 25 SEO Blogs

2008-11-14T07:11:00.000-08:00

I love rankings, what can I say. After I published the “Top 25 Blogs About Blogging” list I thought that someone would replicate it for the SEO sphere. But no one did, so here we go again.

This list was made using pretty much the same algorithm (only small modifications were made, mainly due to the fact that SEO blogs are more popular). Once again the list should be useful because it is based on objective factors. There are many “Top SEO Blogs” lists around the web, but most of them are based on the preferences of the author.

The Top 25 SEO Blogs list, instead, ranks the blogs according to their Google Pagerank, Alexa rank, number of Bloglines subscribers and Technorati authority. Each factor has a score from 0 to 10, and the maximum score for each blog is 40. Details about the algorithm can be found below the table.


#1	Search Engine Land	7	10	9	10	36
#2	SEOBook	6	10	10	10	36
#3	SEO Moz	5	10	10	10	35
#4	Matt Cutts	7	10	8	10	35
#5	Search Engine Watch	7	10	10	7	34
#6	Search Engine Roundtable	7	10	8	8	33
#7	Search Engine Journal	7	8	9	8	32
#8	Online Marketing Blog	6	7	7	10	30
#9	Pronet Advertising	7	7	5	10	29
#10	Marketing Pilgrim	7	8	6	8	29
#11	SEO Chat	6	10	4	6	26
#12	Search Engine Guide	7	8	4	6	25
#13	SEO Blackhat	6	8	6	5	25
#14	Stuntdubl	6	6	6	6	24
#15	Graywolf’s SEO	6	7	4	7	24
#16	SEO by the SEA	6	4	5	5	20
#17	Link Building Blog	5	5	5	4	19
#18	Jim Boykin	5	6	4	4	19
#19	SEOpedia	6	5	4	4	19
#20	DaveN	6	5	4	4	19
#21	Bruce Clay	5	7	3	3	18
#22	Blue Hat SEO	4	6	3	4	17
#23	Tropical SEO	5	5	3	4	17
#24	SEO Refugee	5	6	1	3	15
#25	Small Business SEM	5	4	3	3	15

Blogs considered: the list considers only blogs that have a high percentage of SEO-related content. Topics might range from SEO news coverage to general SEO discussion and link building.

Google Pagerank (0 to 10): the actual Pagerank was used on the algorithm.

Alexa Rank (0 to 10): Ranges were determined based on the Alexa Rank (i.e., 100k and up, 80k-100k, 60k-80k, 40k-60k) and each range was assigned a number (1 to 10).

Bloglines Subscribers (0 to 10): Subscriber ranges were determined (i.e., 1-50, 50-100, 100-150, 150-300) and each range was assigned a number (1 to 10).

Technorati Authority (0 to 10): Ranges were determined based on Technorati’s Authority rank (i.e., 1-125, 125-250, 500-750,750-1000) and each range was assigned a number (1 to 10).

Top 25 Series

SEO Jargon

2008-11-14T07:07:00.000-08:00

If you are just getting started with search engine optimization there are probably many terms that make you scratch your head. Thinking about this problem the guys over SEOMoz decided to publish the “Complete Glossary of Essential SEO Jargon.” Some of the mentions are straight forward, others are not. Below you will find my favorite ones:

Cloak: The practice of delivering different content to the search engine spider than that seen by the human users. This Black Hat tactic is frowned upon by the search engines and caries a virtual death penalty of the site/domain being banned from the search engine results.

Doorway (gateway): A web page that is designed to attract traffic from a search engine and then redirect it to another site or page. A doorway page is not exactly the same as cloaking but the effect is the same in that users and search engines are served different content.

Google bomb: The combined effort of multiple webmasters to change the Google search results usually for humorous effect. The “miserable failure” - George Bush, and “greatest living American” - Steven Colbert Google bombs are famous examples.

Google bowling: Maliciously trying to lower a sites rank by sending it links from the “bad neighborhood” - Kind of like yelling “Good luck with that infection!” to your buddy as you get off the school bus - there is some controversy as to if this works or is just an SEO urban myth.

Google dance: The change in SERPs caused by an update of the Google database or algorithm. The cause of great angst and consternation for webmasters who slip in the SERPs. Or, the period of time during a Google index update when different data centers have different data.

Hub: (expert page) a trusted page with high quality content that links out to related pages.

Keyword Cannibalization: The excessive reuse of the same keyword on too many web pages within the same site. This practice makes it difficult for the users and the search engines to determine which page is most relevant for the keyword.

Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI): This mouthful just means that the search engines index commonly associated groups of words in a document. SEOs refer to these same groups of words as “Long Tail Searches”. The majority of searches consist of three or more words strung together. See also “long tail”. The significance is that it might be almost impossible to rank well for “mortgage”, but fairly easy to rank for “second mortgage to finance monster truck team”. Go figure.

Link Condom: Any of several methods used to avoid passing link love to another page, or to avoid possible detrimental results of indorsing a bad site by way of an outgoing link, or to discourage link spam in user generated content.

Sandbox: There has been debate and speculation that Google puts all new sites into a “sandbox,” preventing them from ranking well for anything until a set period of time has passed. The existence or exact behavior of the sandbox is not universally accepted among SEOs.

The Blogger’s Guide to Meta Tags

2008-11-14T07:05:00.000-08:00

Although off-site optimization is generally considered to be more important, ignoring on-site search engine ranking factors can be costly. Things like solid internal linking and keyword-rich titles can have a very significant impact (as I’ve said before). Meta tags, while they’ve fallen out of vogue as the on-site optimization method of choice, can also play an important role in your site’s search engine rankings.

What are meta tags?

For those who don’t know, a meta tag is an HTML tag that resides in the section of a web page. Unlike other HTML tags, meta tags do not appear anywhere on the page itself, so most visitors never see them. Different meta tags serve different purposes, but they are generally used to provide additional information about the page. The meta description tag, for example, provides a brief summary of the page’s content. How this information gets used varies from tag to tag.

Examples of meta tags:

Which meta tags are worthwhile?

There are a lot of meta tags out there, but very few of them are useful. In fact, chances are good that a site that doesn’t use any meta tags at all will function just as well as a site that does. Some have their uses, however, particularly when communicating with search engine spiders. Here’s the breakdown of every meta tag you’re likely to come across:

Abstract - Use the meta description tag instead.

Author - Sure, it’s nice to plaster your name all over your content. However, the best place to do that is somewhere in the content itself to avoid confusion.

Cache-Control - It’s historical use has been to keep users from seeing outdated versions of your website. Since this is rarely an issue nowadays, it’s no longer as useful. Note, also, that it will do next to nothing to prevent your site from being cached by search engines; you should use the robots meta tag for that purpose.

Classification - Considering how badly spammed the keywords meta tag has been, I can’t see such an arbitrary tag doing any better.

Content-Language - This one’s iffy. Ascertaining the language of the content on a site is rarely a big issue. Use it only if you need to clarify from one page to the next, such as if you have multiple translations of the same page.

Content-Type - This one’s actually important. You can assign the character set of a page using one of several methods, including the content-type meta tag. Make sure you do so in some way on every page.

Copyright - Like the author meta tag, you probably should add the copyright notice directly to the body of your website.

Description - Although its no longer useful for ranking purposes, the description tag is often still used in generating snippets (the text that appears beneath the title in the search engine result pages). It is, therefore, a very powerful tool for drawing in potential visitors. Never underestimate the power of controlling each page’s marketing message to the world.

Designer - The same as author and copyright tags, insert this on the website itself.

Distribution - If a page is meant for internal distribution only, it should be properly blocked using robots.txt or the robots meta tag (below). This tag is completely unnecessary.

Expires - If you have content that shouldn’t be crawled or indexed after a certain period of time, it might be useful. For bloggers, the occasion will probably never arise.

Generator - This one is only used by automated web authoring software, so there’s no point to input it by hand.

GoogleBot - If you have some dire need to instruct one search engine spider differently than another, go ahead.

Keywords - Once upon a time, this might have been useful. Since it was so frequently spammed, however, it no longer carries any ranking benefit. It’s still commonly used, however, and it might even be worthwhile in second-rate search engines, but it won’t get you anywhere with the big boys. If you choose to use it, do not, but do not stuff it!

MSNBot - See the note about the googlebot meta tag.

Owner - See the note about the author meta tag.

PICS-Label - See the note about the rating meta tag.

Pragma - Telling browsers whether or not to cache your page could be handy for usability depending on your site. However, I’ve heard that it doesn’t enjoy a lot of support.

Publisher - See the note about the generator meta tag.

Rating - Like so many web standards, it would be great if it were actually used. However, the sites that deserve a rating of “Mature” or “Restricted” rarely broadcast it. Don’t bother with it; let the rating of your content speak for itself.

Refresh - If you’re redirecting one page to another, use a 301 redirect. Meta refreshes are generally regarded as spam.

Reply-To - See the note about the author meta tag.

Revisit-After - Even if getting frequent visits from search engine spiders offered any competitive advantage (it doesn’t), they aren’t going to visit your site more frequently just because you ask them to. This one’s only useful for limiting the frequency of spidering, not increasing it.

Robots - Although you can use the robots.txt file to issue site-wide directives to search engines, the robots meta tag is very handy for controlling spidering on a page-by-page basis. You can tell search engines whether a page should be indexed, whether it should be archived, whether or not its links should be followed, and even how to generate its search result snippet.

Subject - Your title tag should communicate your subject; using a meta tag to do so is unnecessary.

Title - Don’t bother with the meta title tag when your ordinary title tag does the job much better.

Unavailable-After - Believe it or not, this one’s brand new and supported by Google. Why they didn’t just go with the expires meta tag is anyone’s guess. At any rate, like it’s identical twin, it will rarely if ever be useful for bloggers.

There are literally dozens more meta tags out there, few of which enjoy any widespread use. When in doubt about whether a meta tag is worthwhile or not, it’s probably best to assume it isn’t. Otherwise, you’ll just end up cluttering your page headers with a lot of useless junk.

If anyone has any additional meta tags or insights to add, please share them in a comment and I’ll update the original post as needed.

Calculate Your Google Supplemental Index Ratio

2008-11-14T07:04:00.000-08:00

Successful bloggers know the importance of learning SEO concepts. One method of measuring the SEO health of your website is to calculate the ratio of your pages in Google’s supplemental index.

What is the supplemental index?

In short, its nickname is ‘Google Hell’ and it is a place your website does not want to be. The supplemental index is a secondary index for lower ranking pages. Pages found in the supplemental index tend to be crawled less often and will never be assigned Page Rank. As a result, these pages tend to appear lower in organic search results. There are many reasons why pages lose rank and fall into the supplemental index. Here are the most common:

Low quality content (1 line posts)
Internal duplicate content noise or scraped posts
Lack of external links
The number of query string parameters exceeds Google’s algorithm

Calculating your supplemental index ratio

There has been numerous posts in the SEO community on calculating Google supplemental index ratios. Unfortunately, most of the queries to determine the number of pages in the supplemental index were deprecated and no longer return the correct results. These queries include:

site:www.yoursite.com *** -sjpked
site:www.yoursite.com *** -sljktf
site:www.yoursite.com *** -view
site:www.yoursite.com *** -ndsfoiw

Since supplemental queries seem to have a limited lifetime, a more stable way is to find the number of pages in the main index (those that have a higher chance of appearing in search results) and subtract it from the total number of pages indexed.

Total Pages Indexed = site:www.yoursite.com
Pages in the Main Index = site:www.yoursite.com -inallurl:www.yoursite.com

Pages in Supplemental Index = Total Pagex Indexed - Pages in the Main Index

To calculate your supplemental index ratio you simply divide the number of supplemental pages by the total number of pages indexed (the lower this ratio, the better). Below you will find some examples:

Website	Pages in Supplemental Index	Total Pages Indexed	Supplemental Index Ratio
www.seobook.com	90	2260	3,9%
www.dailyblogtips.com	60	521	11,5%
www.copyblogger.com	116	574	20,2%

How can I make my ratio better?

Optimize Your Blog for Search Engines. Many tips can be found in the previous article Blog Setup: 40 Practical Tips
QC + QL = No Supplemental Index. The best way to pull your pages out of the supplemental index is by providing quality content (QC) that will get you quality links (QL). Search engines will start to view your blog as an authority and will place your page in the main index. You might get lucky and through internal linking or site association other pages may also be removed from the supplemental index.
Be patient. New blogs tend to have ratios above 75% for a number of months. This is because of low traffic and a lack of quality links. Keep posting quality content and your ratio will improve.

SEO Advice for Bloggers, Straight from the Horse’s Mouth

2008-11-14T07:00:00.000-08:00

At a recent WordCamp conference, Matt Cutts, one of Google’s most outspoken authorities, weighed in with some advice for bloggers. Some of what he had to say was real news and some of it just reinforced common SEO wisdom, but it was all very useful information. The video of Matt’s presentation is shown below. If you don’t have an hour to watch the whole thing, I’ve also summarized some of Matt’s more notable points.

RSS subscribers will need to click on the video link to watch.

Juicy Tidbits

Matt had a lot to say. Here are some of his most noteworthy observations.

If you think Google hates your site, get over it. Algorithms don’t hold grudges.
Wordpress is very good for SEO right out of the box.
The SEO Title Tag Plugin can be very helpful for your rankings.
If you have a choice about how to structure your URLs, use dashes to indicate word breaks. If you use underscores, though, don’t bother making the switch. Just be sure to use one of the two.
Put your blog in a sub-directory rather than the root in case you want to do other things with your site later. It might also get people to link to your home page and your blog separately for double the link juice. Just don’t name the directory “wordpress.”
Be sure that post creation dates are easy to find.
If you want to get listed in Google News, you need to have multiple authors.
Full text RSS gets more loyal readers. Partial feeds just get more page views (not sure about this one).
When considering video vs. podcast, check your rating on hotornot.com. If you got 6 or lower, go with a podcast.
Use a different stylesheet for mobile content.
Having a lot of slashes in your URL, such as for the date, doesn’t cause problems in Google. It might still cause problems in Yahoo or MSN.
Communicate with Google through the Webmaster Console. It’s a great way to monitor for any potential ranking problems.
If you’re popular enough that people might want to hack you, consider making your wp-admin folder only accessible via a white list.

Common SEO Advice

Matt also provided a number of good tips that are just common sense when it comes to SEO. For those of you who may be new to SEO, here are the important ones.

When writing titles and copy, use words that people might type to search for your post. Don’t forget synonyms and plural versions of those words. Put the same consideration into category names.
File extensions make no difference when it comes to search engine rankings. Just make sure to never use .exe.
Search engine spiders and visually-impaired users have one thing in common: They both like alt text on images and other media.
When you’re moving your domain, use a 301 redirect to preserve your rankings.
Don’t put too much work into meta tags. Google doesn’t pay very much attention to them.
If you want to be ranked, make sure your site can be crawled.
Decide whether or not to use www in your URLs and be consistent about it. The yes-www plugin is great for this. Also be sure to set your preference in the Google Webmaster Console.
Query strings are treated the same as static URLs. Just be sure to limit the number of parameters to two or three.
Supplemental pages need links to get out of the supplemental index.

The real take-home lesson from Matt’s presentation, and one that’s echoed time and again by SEO professionals and successful bloggers alike, is to focus on content first and rankings second. If you have one, you will get the other. More importantly, it doesn’t pay to try and game Google’s algorithm.

No More Text Link Ads and Paid Links?

2008-11-14T06:59:00.000-08:00

The discussion about Google penalizing websites that sell text link ads has been going for a while. It looks like some stronger evidences are emerging, though.

Search Engine Land just published an article titled “Official: Selling Paid Links Can Hurt Your PageRank or Rankings on Google.” The article illustrates some high profile sites like the Stanford Daily, which saw its PR drop from 9 to 7, supposedly due to the the practice of selling text links. Here is a quotation:

Last week, I noticed the Stanford Daily had dropped from when I wrote the above in April to PR7 today. That’s a huge drop that has no apparent reason to happen. Some others were also reporting PageRank drops. So I pinged Google, and they confirmed that PageRank scores are being lowered for some sites that sell links.

In addition, Google said that some sites that are selling links may indeed end up being dropped from its search engine or have penalties attached, to prevent them from ranking well.

It looks like there might be a PageRank update going on as well, and several sites that used to sell text link ads experienced a drop in PR (e.g., Entrepreneurs-Journey).

Personally I will follow Google’s guidelines on paid links. I might not agree with their policy completely, but I really do not feel in the position to risk getting penalized.

I am also starting to consider if my 125×125 sponsor ads should have the “nofollow” tag or not. But for the moment I will not change it since Search Engine Land itself and several other high profile blogs have the same setup.

Do you plan to keep selling text links on your website?

SEO, It’s About What You DON’T Do

2008-11-14T06:57:00.000-08:00

In my old position as an SEO analyst, I often found myself having to correct my clients’ assumptions about search engine optimization. Some had the misconception that SEO was all about keywords and meta tags. If anything, these are among the last factors to consider. Other, slightly savvier clients thought it was all about building good content and inbound links. Sure, these are certainly important elements of a successful campaign, but they aren’t even the first things to worry about. With each of these clients, I had to share the following revelation:

SEO isn’t as much about what you do as what you DON’T do.

That is to say, if you’re going to start down the road of search engine optimization, you have to know where the potholes are before you get underway. If you’re getting started doing SEO for your blog, here are some of the most important practices to avoid.

Keyword Stuffing. Stuffing keywords is only useful for getting your site penalized or delisted. Period. There is no legitimate reason to do this except to game the search engines, and they’re very good at detecting it. Whether you’re putting them in your content, in alt tags, in meta tags, or wherever, be sure to use your keywords in moderation.
Mirrored Sites and Content Duplication. “Why settle for one top 10 rankings when you can have all ten?” Because it can cause all of your rankings to drop. This is the reason that scrapers are dangerous. Ideally, your content should be as unique as possible to a single page. As I mentioned previously, search engines are probably smart enough to recognize content duplication within blogs (e.g., the same post text on your home page and the individual post page), so some duplication isn’t much cause for concern. Generally speaking, though, the more unique your content is, the better off you’ll be.
Cloaking. Showing one thing to users and another thing to search engine spiders is a big red flag. To those who think it’s a good idea, here’s a news flash: It’s just as easy for a spider to change its user agent as it is for a browser. You can bet search engine spiders are crawling your site under a variety of names just to see if you’re cloaking or not, so don’t do it.
Hidden Text and Images. No matter how you hide content, search engines are smart enough to detect it. Granted, there are legitimate reasons to hide content from users, but it’s pretty obvious when you’re up to something. Just to be on the safe side, consider carefully if you really need to hide your content or if you could find another solution.
Cross Linking. Generally speaking, it’s okay to link your sites together. People do it all the time. However, it can be considered spam if you do so excessively (e.g., in the footer or side bar of every page), especially if the sites reside on the same IP block. As with everything else, ask the question, “Is this adding value for the user?” If you can answer yes, it’s probably okay.

Knowing and avoiding practices like these is the first step toward ensuring good search engine rankings. Only after realizing what not to do (and correcting it if you’re already doing it) should you move forward with keyword research, content development, link building, and all of the fun parts about SEO.

Google Ranking Scraped Material on Top?

2008-11-14T06:55:00.000-08:00

Today I was doing a small research around the Internet to see how many people was scraping my articles. Needless to say there was a whole bunch of them. The interesting thing, however, was to discover that when I performed narrow search queries with sentences that were contained in my articles, Google would return the scraper site on top, and my original content on the supplemental results.

For example, I searched for “the user should be able to see all the navigation options straight way”, quotation marks included to make it an exact match. That sentence was coming from my most popular article, 43 Web Design Mistakes You Should Avoid.

Google found 1 page with that sentence, and it was a scraper site violating copyright. The original article was in the supplemental pages. The same pattern was found on pretty much all my popular articles.

Maybe the deal was specific to my site, I thought, so I decided to test with some other authority blogs. Next I searched for “Tip Jars and donation buttons have been a part of blogging for years now”, which is a sentence coming from one of the most popular posts on Problogger, How Bloggers Make Money from Blogs. This time four results appeared, and all four of them were scraper sites. The original entry was on the third supplemental page.

Finally I searched for “Instead of using the throwaway plastic utensils available at work”, which is coming from an article on LifeHacker. You can’t have much more authority than these guys, so this was the acid test. Guess what, once again Google returned 4 pages, and all of them were scraper sites.

Try to perform a search for exact sentences coming from your popular articles. Are the scraper sites ranking above your original content? Do you know why Google behaves that way or how one could fix the problem?

Update: Maybe it was not clear on the post, but this problem happens only when I search for exact sentences contained on the articles. If I search for one or two keywords related to the title they will still rank on the first page of results.

Google Changing the PageRank Algorithm?

2008-11-14T06:51:00.000-08:00

If things keep at this pace I might rename this blog to Daily Google Tips. Over the last two weeks we have been talking about Google every other day. This time it is the PageRank buzz again.

Both Problogger and Copyblogger, two of the most popular blogs on the niche, announced that their PR dropped from 6 to 4. Previously other authority blogs confirmed that they lost PR, but the suspect was towards paid links. Given that Problogger and Copyblogger are not selling links, it might be just a readjustment on the PR scale.

Some people are arguing that since the PR drop is not generalized, it must be a slap from Google due to practices that conflict with its guidelines. Andy Beard suggested that the sites that got penalized were either selling links or exchanging them inside large blog networks. This is a feasible explanation given that most of the Weblogs, Inc blogs (Engadget above all) were penalized, and they do not sell paid links either.

Here is a list that I gathered with big blogs that supposedly lost PR on this issue:

Statcounter (from 10 to 6)
Engadget (from 7 to 5)
AutoBlog (from 6 to 4)
Problogger (from 6 to 4)
Copyblogger (from 6 to 4)
AdesBlog (from 7 to 5)
Search Engine Journal (from 7 to 4)
Quick Online Tips (from 6 to 3)
Search Engine Roundtable (from 7 to 4)
Blog Herald (from 6 to 4)
Weblog Tools Collection (from 6 to 4)
JohnTP (from 6 to 4)
Coolest Gadgets (from 5 to 3)
CyberNet News (from 6 to 4)

Update: It looks like mainstream websites that were selling links were also penalized:

Washington Post (from 7 to 5)
Washington Times (from 6 to 4)
Charlotte Observer (from 6 to 4)
Forbes.com (from 7 to 5)
SFGate.com (from 7 to 5)
Sun Times (from 7 to 5)
New Scientist (from 7 to 5)
Seattle Times (from 6 to 4)

Update 2: After reading through the avalanche of posts on the subject, it appears that this is not a PageRank update but rather a distribution of penalties (either automatic or manual). The theory that the penalized blogs were either selling links or part of a network that used a cross-linking strategy seems to hold.

Confirmed: Google PageRank Update in Progress

2008-11-14T06:48:00.000-08:00

It looks like the PageRank drops that we reported a couple of days ago (read Google Changing the PageRank Algorithm?) were indeed penalties being distributed to specific blogs.

The reason for the penalties it not totally clear yet, but Darren said that he got confirmations from two sources at Google that the penalties were being given exclusively for paid links, and not for cross-linking inside blog networks.

That would explain why many blogs recovered from the drop, including Problogger itself. Supposedly these blogs were wrongly associated with paid links, and Google reversed their PageRank to the normal level after realizing that.

The Google datacenters are still reporting scattered data, so it is difficult to know what will be the PageRank of some sites involved in the previous penalties (Andy Beard is trying to keep track of them).

The good thing is that most websites are actually seeing the PageRank update now, and many are going up. My other blog Daily Writing Tips went from PR0 to PR5, while Daily Blog Tips stayed PR5.

What about your blog, has it gained PageRank?

The Future of Paid Linking

2008-11-14T06:45:00.000-08:00

Paid linking… Ever since Google’s recent batch of visible PageRank updates, it’s been the topic on every blogger’s mind. Sure, paid linking a great way to monetize a website, but is it worth the risk? What will become of those who defy the Google gods and continue to sell popularity? After the smoke clears, what sort of brave new blogosphere will remain? Here are some predictions.

Google will continue on the warpath against paid linking. This shouldn’t come as any surprise, since it’s obvious that paid linking is a big threat to Google. It undermines the quality of organic search and takes money away from Google’s own online advertising and website monetization products, AdWords and AdSense. It’s in Google’s best interest to keep fighting it. Their terminator, Googlebot, will only get smarter and more efficient as time goes by, eventually hunting down and penalizing any website that shows the slightest hint of paid linking.

Paid linking will go further underground. No matter how many penalties are assessed, bloggers who crave income won’t be satisfied with AdSense. They’ll hide their paid links within posts, brokering them behind the scenes and blending them seamlessly with ordinary content. This is already happening, so it’s more fact than prediction, but the practice will become much more pronounced. Googlebot will, of course, have great difficulty separating these blended paid links from their non-paid counterparts. In adapting to the new, signal-less environment, it will mistakenly penalize innocent websites, resulting in a backlash from webmasters that will prompt Google to ease off of its offensive.

PageRank will become meaningless. In Google’s attempts to kill paid linking by making PageRank an unreliable measure of link value, PageRank will be the ultimate casualty. Bloggers and entrepreneurs will sense the growing discontent and develop third party measurements to take its place. Eventually, PageRank will be looked down upon as inaccurate, uninformative, and frequently out-of-date, as it always should have been.

Google will demolish trust between link buyers and sellers. Just after the paid linking community thinks is has won a small reprieve, Google will unleash a secret counterattack in the form of voluntary disavowal of links (as they’ve already hinted). Within Google Webmaster Tools, a new utility will be developed that will allow webmasters to remove their own outbound links from ranking calculations, all without ever using rel=”nofollow”. Link buyers will no longer be able to trust that link sellers aren’t cashing in without providing value. Short of adding an unenforceable “You will not disavow paid links” clause to link brokerage agreements, all trust in paid linking as a useful SEO method will be lost.

In the end, Google will emerge victorious. Online advertising will continue and thrive as it always has, and some bloggers may be able to use traffic-based advertising for monetization. For the most part, however, paid linking will be reduced to a shadow of its former self. With the value of paid linking for ranking purposes being next to nothing, paid posting and paid directories will also take a hit. Dejected and crestfallen, bloggers will turn to other methods of blog monetization.

What do you think? Are these predictions accurate? What kind of a future should we expect for paid linking?

Hit Scrapers Where It Hurts: Adsense

2008-11-14T06:15:00.000-08:00

A couple of weeks ago I wrote an article titled “Google Ranking Scraped Material on Top?,” where I described that for very narrow search terms Google was ranking splogs and content scrapers before the original content.

By the time I was not sure about the best approach to combat these forms of plagiarism and content theft. Filling a DMCA, as Google suggests, is a laborious process (you even need to send documents via fax…).

Reading through the comments, though, I came across some solid advice from Andy Beal. Andy was basically suggesting to report an Adsense TOS infringement instead of filing a DMCA.

Getting someone that is violating copyright kicked out of Adsense should be faster and easier than getting the content removed from an anonymous blogger account (despite that being the optimal situation).

In order to report the Adsense account of the scraper you just need to click on the “Ads by Google” link that appears on all Adsense units.

On the footer of the following page you will see a link saying “Send Google your thoughts on the site or the ads you just saw.” Just click there and follow the instructions.

I started to to employ this method with some sites that are copying my content on a consistent basis, and I will keep you guys updated on the results that I will get.

Have you had any luck combating scrapers? What methods did you use?

Could Indexation Time Affect SEO?

2008-11-14T06:12:00.000-08:00

Back in September when Blog Rush announced that it was opening for beta, the blogosphere became a monotonic buzz. Blog Rush had a referral system where you could earn credits by referring new members, so pretty much everyone and their cousins decided to write about it.

I first heard the scoop inside a private forum, and I decided to publish my review as soon as possible, at the expense of being brief and not highlighting all the nuances of the service.

A couple of weeks ago I searched in Google for “blog rush,” and I was surprised to find that my little post was ranking in the 6th position.

Sure my article had the minimum SEO factors in place (a good URL, title tag, distribution of keywords and so on), but this alone could not explain how I was ranked in the 6th position out of 32 million results. Many of the competing articles had a higher keyword density and more backlinks.

The explanation that I could find was that Google indexed my post before the others, and this factor contributed to its ranking. Now, I don’t think that being the first to write about a specific subject will automatically put you in Google’s front page for these keywords, but I guess it could help.

It would make sense, after all, if one of the 200 or so factors that Google uses in its algorithm was the indexation time.

Sure, when you are the first to write about a specific topic you will naturally be ranked first for it (provided that the page is located in a strong domain and that other SEO factors are there). That is not the issue I am exploring though. My question is, would it be harder for another page to displace your position — even if said page has a better keyword distribution, more backlinks and other SEO factor — just because Google indexed you first?

I can’t say for sure, since I never heard anything similar inside the SEO sphere, but I think it could be the case.

Do you know if the time when a certain page gets indexed will affect Google’s algorithm for sure, and what weight does it carry?

Using Google Image Search to Drive Traffic to Your Site

2008-11-14T06:10:00.000-08:00

This entry was written by one of our members and submitted to our YOUmoz section. The author's views below are entirely his or her own and may not reflect the views of SEOmoz, Inc.

In the search to find the best ways to promote or drive traffic to your site, Google Image Search is often overlooked. While ranking for terms in Google Image Search is unlikely to ever bring you massive amounts of traffic a la Digg or StumbleUpon, the steps to optimize your images for Google Image Search are extremely simple, and the traffic gains you do make more than make up for the effort.

As an example, we will use the image of Barry Schwartz, Chris Boggs and Daron Babin at SES Chicago 2006 doing the Search Pulse one evening.

Photo Credits SmallBusinessSEM.com

Note:I borrowed (stole) this image from Barry’s blog. Check it out - it’s always a great read.

The first two steps are more SEO 'common sense' than anything else--they should always be performed in order to include extra keywords in your content so that you'll provide more context for your pages. In addition to being common sense for general SEO, they are an absolute necessity for good results in the Google Image Search.

Steps to Optimize Your Images for Google Image Search

Use Descriptive Filenames - A filename can present you with your first chance to include keywords in your images. Title the image with a word or short phrase which describes what is in the image. For example, rather than using a camera-assigned filename such as DSC05443.jpg, use a filename like barry-schwartz-chris-boggs-daron-babin-SES-chicago.jpg. Notice the way that I have used a dash (-) between the words in the title - this is commonly interpreted by Google as a space in the filename. This is the most search engine friendly way of labeling images.
Use the alt tag! - the alt tag in your image link code will allow you to include some more keywords describing your image. Additionally, the alt tag text will be displayed by Google Image Search in place of the filename in each search result. Therefore, use that as well when linking your code. Here is an example for the example image we are using:
Get Included in Google Image Labeler - The Google Image Labeler is a game in which you and a partner collaborate to write tags for images presented. You receive points when you both submit matching tags. The matching tags are then assigned to the images, and taken into consideration for the Google Image Search search results. In order to ensure that your images are included, access your Google Webmaster Central account, and go to the management page for your site. In the left hand bar, you will see an link which says ‘Enhanced Image Search’. Clicking this link will present you with the option to opt-in to the Enhanced Image Search features. This option signifies to Google that you are allowing them to use tools such as the Image Labeler to assist in the indexing of the images on your site.

These steps will help ensure that you can get your images ranking in the Google Image Search. As I said above, GIS is not likely to drive nearly as much traffic as many other means; at the same time, the steps to optimize for GIS are quite simple.

19 Ways to Get More Traffic to Your Site Using Google Images

2008-11-14T06:08:00.000-08:00

19 Ways to Get More Traffic to Your Site Using Google Images

One way to get more search engine traffic is to optimize your website for Google Image Search, a tool which allows users to easily find images by typing in specific search terms, phrases and keywords.

Many people utilize Google Image search to find images for a wide variety of topics, which can range from pictures of cars to celebrities and furniture.

Images can not only make your website visually attractive: they can help you to gain more daily search engine traffic.

Highly relevant image results show up at the top of Google’s search results page when one searches for specific topics. Getting listed in this prime position can possibly send a great deal of traffic to your website.

Introduction to Google Image Search Optimization

Google Image Search optimization is not a difficult process and only requires that you pay attention to how you label and use your images within the regular framework of your website. A lot of image optimization involves basic search optimization factors such as the inclusion of relevant keywords in the content, title and meta tags.

All of the articles I’ve read on the topic of Google Images optimization seem to be in common agreement and they offer similar suggestions, although a few of them do highlight some different methods of utilizing Google Image Search.

19 Ways to Get More Traffic Using Google Image Search

I’ve made a full list of all the methods I’ve come across so that all of you can have an accessible reference point, should you decide to use Google Images as a method to drive more traffic to your website.

Also added are a few points of my own, specifically dealing with how targeting specific image topics and integrating them within your webpages can help to attract a great deal more traffic through Google images.

Depending on your niche and images used, you’ll be able to attract a great deal of extra visitors easily with very little additional work. I highly recommending putting at least a few of these points into practice on your own website.

Here is the list of Google image optimization tips in full:

1. Insert keywords into your Alt Text.

Here’s an example: Alt description goes here">

2. Name your Images with Descriptive Titles.

‘lindsay-lohan.jpg’

‘b473.jpg’

3. Use relevant text around your images.

It is recommended that descriptive text with your targeted keywords be placed immediately before or after the image itself. If you do a search for any term on Google Image, you’ll find that a short description of 20+ characters beneath every image. You’ll probably notice that the keyword is listed in bold as well.

4. Use Adsense to assess overall content relevance.

Change your content until the Adsense units reflect the keywords you want to target. In my opinion, this is not only applies to Google images but is a generally helpful method as it improves your overall latent semantic indexing score and makes your site appear more relevant to Google for targeted key phrases or words.

5. Optimize Your Title and Meta tags.

This should already be part of your overall optimization strategy and it purportedly helps your site to rank better in image searches as well. Like the use of Adsense for testing, paying attention to this point will help you to have better visibility in Google’s main search engine as well.

6. Use anchor text keywords in links to images.

See here

Click for Full Size

Lindsay Lohan Picture

Lindsay Lohan in Rehab

7. Use Internal and Social Site Tags for your Images

If you are using images with little or no textual content, it might be helpful to tag your images using internal tagging functions or social tags like Technorati. This may add more weight to your image and help it to rank better. If you are uploading your images using Flickr, remember to use the appropriate keyword tags as well.

8. Use Broad Categories of Images to Get a Larger Audience

If you’re running a gadget website, you don’t have to only upload pictures of gadgets. Try upload pictures of web 2.0 sites, web applications and pictures of items related to your gadgets. For example, you can upload pictures of living rooms instead, if the gadget was designed to complement residential space.

9. Make Your Image folder accessible to search engines

Ensure that your robots.txt file does not limit search engines from accessing your image files. This is essential if you want your images to be ranked on Google Image Search. Try not to use javascript links on image files as well as it will limit search engine access as well.

10. Re-upload your pictures to maintain search freshness

If you have a picture that focuses on highly popular keywords, you can try to remove and re-upload another version of your image because freshness might affect relevancy and may rejuvenate your ranking on the Google Image Search engine.

11. Make your Google Images Standards-compliant.

fully compliant image reference

12. Enable Google Image Search in Webmaster Central.

Google Webmaster Tools

enhanced image search

13. Try out Google Image Labeler.

Google Image Labeler

14. Use Javascript to prevent framing of your webpages

javascript code

15. HotLink Images from Google Search

search results for Jessica Alba

Most of the images in the top row are hotlinked and actually rank better than the original image source. You should probably note that hotlinking is frowned upon by most webmasters because it leeches their bandwidth, not to mention that you might be violating copyrights as well.

An alternative method of hotlinking is to hotlink Google’s cache itself. This short tutorial gives clear indication of how to do it but this method only allows you to use thumbnails, not to mention that some webmasters have reported seeing no results after trying this method.

16. Use Image Sizing to Target a Search Term.

The size of your image may determine the amount of visits you receive from Google Image Search. Some people use Google Image to search for wallpapers and if you’re targeting a specific keyword, try creating it in the form of a wallpaper or in the form of an icon, depending on how much competition there is for the specific image.

17. Use Images about ‘Hot’ Topics.

Google Trends

18. Create a separate page and link to the page and image

I have not personally tried this but some have claimed that it helps both the regular search rank as well as the Image Search rank. See this page for the method in full.

19. Monitor the Number of Google Images Indexed

The easiest way to do this is to use a site search operator. For example, here is a list of images indexed on Boing Boing. Simply change boingboing.net to your url: http://images.google.com/images?q=site:boingboing.net

Converting Google Image Search Visitors

Getting traffic from Google Image Search is very nice but you’ll need some way of converting them into a customer or future reader. This can be quite difficult because visitors are likely to click away if after they find the image.

Here are some conversion tactics you can use:

Place your image on a webpage with highly relevant content
Link to other relevant webpages and image galleries
Promote a special offer related to the product image that you’ve used
Allow users to copy the image and paste it on their website (try this script)
Include call to actions at the start and end of webpages

Try Experimenting with Google Image Search..

I’ve recently gotten a decent number of hits for a image which was experiencing seasonal surge in search queries for a specific term and I’m sure that the list of tips above will help you to get some extra traffic from Google Images as well.

You can start by first trying out a few images in your webpages or new blog posts to see if you actually get some traffic from it. Remember to monitor traffic through your stats package and tweak for optimum results.

For more traffic building tips, do subscribe to Dosh Dosh’s blog feed.

Create a robots.txt file

2008-11-14T06:06:00.000-08:00

The robots.txt file is used to instruct search engine robots about what pages on your website should be crawled and consequently indexed. Most websites have files and folders that are not relevant for search engines (like images or admin files) therefore creating a robots.txt file can actually improve your website indexation.

A robots.txt is a simple text file that can be created with Notepad. If you are using Wordpress a sample robots.txt file would be:

User-agent: *
Disallow: /wp-
Disallow: /feed/
Disallow: /trackback/

“User-agent: *” means that all the search bots (from Google, Yahoo, MSN and so on) should use those instructions to crawl your website. Unless your website is complex you will not need to set different instructions for different spiders.

“Disallow: /wp-” will make sure that the search engines will not crawl the Wordpress files. This line will exclude all files and foldes starting with “wp-” from the indexation, avoiding duplicated content and admin files.

If you are not using Wordpress just substitute the Disallow lines with files or folders on your website that should not be crawled, for instance:

User-agent: *
Disallow: /images/
Disallow: /cgi-bin/
Disallow: /any other folder to be excluded/

After you created the robots.txt file just upload it to your root directory and you are done!

Google’s Algorithm Biased Towards New Web Pages?

2008-11-14T06:02:00.000-08:00

Well, to some extent we already knew this (read Could Indexation Time Affect SEO?).

The Google Operating System blog, however, is reporting an extrapolation of this pattern. According to the article Google might be artificially promoting recent web pages to the point of out placing trusted and established websites like Wikipedia.

They gave the example of the term “January 1 tcp/ip.” Yesterday Google changed its logo to celebrate the anniversary of the famous Internet protocol, resulting in a sudden increase on the number of related search queries.

If you performed a search for this term, though, on the first page you would find only recently created web pages like Digg submissions and Blogspot blogs that were trying to leverage this traffic.

I checked again today and results are still dominated by recently created material. If nothing else this is an interesting trend to watch. The question that emerges is: “for how long will the results keep this bias?”

It is also a good idea to keep an eye on search queries that become popular overnight. If you move fast using the right URL and keywords you could outrank Wikipedia!

Update: Patrick from Blogstorm has a possible explanation for the whole issue.

Google PR Update: Here We Go Again!

2008-11-14T05:59:00.000-08:00

Keep in mind there is nothing confirmed, but several people started to notice changes both in PageRank and backlinks count numbers.

One of my sites apparently gained PR as well. DailyBits went from a PR2 to a PR4.

I tried to check on Google’s data centers but most of them are behaving strangely (reporting a PR0 even for established websites). One tool that appears to be working is this one.

No one was expecting such an early PageRank update in 2008. The last one, as you probably can remember, happened late in October and it created a lot of buzz due to a new policy that Google decided to adopt towards websites that were selling text links without the nofollow tag.

Have you noticed any changes?

Check if Your Images Appear on Google Image Search

2008-11-14T05:53:00.000-08:00

Bloggers and webmasters know that every single visitor helps to build up traffic, right? If that is the case, you should make sure that Google is correctly indexing your images, and that people searching for related image terms will have a chance to visit your blog.

Here is a quick check that you can perform to find that out. Just head to Google, and click on the “Images” link on the top left corner. That will take you to the Image Search. Now you just need to type on the search bar “site:yourdomain.com“. This quiery will filter only the results coming from your site.

If your images are getting indexed correctly by Google you should be able to see a whole bunch of them on the search results.

If, on the other hand, your images are not getting indexed by Google you will just see a “Your search did not match any documents” message.

The most common cause for this problem is a flawed robots.txt file (read “Create a robots.txt file” for an introduction to it).

For example, I used to have a “Disallow: /wp-content/” line on my robots.txt file, with the purpose of blocking some internal WordPress files from search bots. It worked, but as a result it also blocked all my images that were located in /wp-content/uploads/. The solution was simple: I just added the following line after that one: “Allow: /wp-content/uploads/”.

So if your images are not getting indexed, check your robots.txt file to make sure it is not blocking the access to them.

There are other causes that might make Google not list your images on its search results, including a low Pagerank, non relevant tags, poor permalink structure, bad image attributes and so on. If you are sure that your images are accessible to search bots, therefore, it could be a good idea to work on their tags and attributes. Here are two articles that you guide you through the steps required:

Even if your images are already indexed, the tips and tricks described in those articles will help you to maximize the incoming traffic from image searches.

Google PageRank Update Going On?

2008-11-14T05:50:00.000-08:00

Personally I have not seen any major changes yet, but some readers emailed me to let me know about a possible toolbar PageRank update (thanks Court).

There is also some activity going on the Digital Point Google forum, which indicate that some change is indeed happening right now.

Keep in mind that we are talking about the toolbar PageRank, that one that you are able to see with your browser. Real PageRanks get updated continuously.

I tried to use some of the prediction and cross datacenters tools to see if the change was trackable from them, but most are not working anymore.

Have you noticed any change on your websites?

Why You Must be the First, in Google’s Search Results at Least!

2008-11-14T05:43:00.000-08:00

People always say that you need to be in the first page of results in Google if you want to receive clicks, right? Well, this will hurt, but the reality is that merely being in the first page is not enough. In fact, if you are around the lowest positions, you could end up getting a meager 1% of the overall clicks on searches for those keywords.

This is a very hot topic, but strangely there it not a large amount of research around it. The most reliable study so far comes from the Cornell University. They used an eye tracking technology to discover what percentage of users would click on each of the 10 results appearing on the first page of Google for certain topics. The results, at least my opinion, are pretty shocking, as the image below illustrates (image via SEO Researcher):

Let’s use some numbers to understand it better. Even if you manage to rank in the first page of Google for a keyword that receives 2,000 searches per day, you could end up receiving only 28 clicks daily if you appear on the ninth position. Even the web page appearing in the second position will only receive 268. Not a bad number, but it pales in comparison to the 1126 clicks that the first result would reap.

It is a pity that we don’t have more data to confirm those numbers (if you do please share with us). Google would be in a very good position to find out these patterns, but I guess they have no interest to reveal them.

Regardless, the takeaway message is: there are increasing returns as you move up into the first page of results. if you are aiming to get organic traffic, therefore, you need to appear in the first position for your target keywords!

Google Indexing Scrapers First?

2008-11-14T05:41:00.000-08:00

Yesterday I published a guest post from Abhijeet Mukherjee titled Do You Know Your Visitors? 5 Points to Consider. A couple of hours later Abhijeet messaged me on Gtalk to let me know that Google was not indexing my backlinks to his blog, but rather the link from a scraper site that had copied part of the post.

This made me curious and went to check for myself. The first thing I wanted to know was if my post was indexed already by Google or not. I copied one sentence from the post and search it in Google, with quotation marks to find only exact matches. The result was pretty surprising: Google had already indexed 2 scraper sites, but my original post was not on their index yet, as the image below illustrates:

I repeated the search query today, and my post is now showing on the first position. Regardless, I find it pretty weird that Google would index first scraping material and only afterwards the original source. The same thing was happening to the indexation of the backlinks.

Anyone know what could be the cause for this flaw?

Open Discussion: How Often Does Google Update its SERPs?

2008-11-14T05:40:00.000-08:00

This is a question that has been on my mind for some time, and despite researching around the web, I was not able to find a clear and definitive answer.

How often does Google update its SERPs?

That is, how often does it incorporates the information that it gets from its crawling bots and applies it to the SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages)?

I think there are 2 possible cases here. On the first one Google would update the SERPs in real time and constantly, as soon as new information is retrieved from its crawling bots. For example, if a bot was crawling a certain page and discovered that the Title tag was changed, it would immediately report it back to a central data center, that would in turn update the database and the ranking positions for this particular website.

A second possibility is that Google has a fixed schedule to update all the results together. For example, it could do it once every 48 hours, and on every update it would combine all the data retrieved from crawling bots and recalculate all the SERPs simultaneously. The schedule here could be daily, every 48 hours, every week and so on.

This factor is quite important because it gives bloggers and webmasters a time frame to check the results of your optimization efforts. Suppose you discovered that all your h1 and h2 tags were messed up on your site. You learn how they should be properly used, fix the problem, and then start monitoring specific keywords to see if your ranking positions will be affected.

But how long should you wait to see the results? Let me know what you think!

The Ultimate Collection of SEO Tools

2008-11-14T05:37:00.002-08:00

The folks from Search Engine Journal created a nice compilation with the best, and free, SEO tools around the web. All of them work as online applications so you won’t need to download anything.

An interesting feature are the comparison charts that they created for each category, like the one below:

You will find backlink analysis tools, keyword research and brainstorm tools, domain name tools, on site analysis tools and search related tools, so check it out.

PageRank Update Coming in 2-3 Days

2008-11-14T05:37:00.001-08:00

Hey I am not the one saying it, the word is coming from Mr. Matt Cutts (head of Google’s web spam team).

As you probably know this is just an update of the nominal PR, the one you see on the toolbars. The real one is updated much more frequently, and that is the one that affects your search rankings.

There are people that say “Hey, I don’t care for PR anymore.” Well, I would believe the ones that don’t have any toolbar installed on their browsers to check the PR of the different websites around.

Personally I do care for it. Not a lot, but still.

You can’t deny that PR is a metric used by people to evaluate the trustworthy of a website. Some advertisers and site buyers also take it into consideration.

Anyway, let’s see what will happen. I am hoping that some of my new websites will gain some PR from 0, and hopefully Daily Blog Tips will keep its PR7.

Do you have any websites where you expect changes?

Is Google Crossing the Line with Knol?

2008-11-14T05:35:00.000-08:00

I did say in the past that I like the way Google does business. Some people argue that they are trying to dominate the web. Well, as long as they try to do this with transparency and ethics that is not much you can condemn. Google is a publicly traded company inside a capitalism environment after all - its objective is to maximize the value for the share and stake holders. If there is a business where they think they can make a profit, they will enter it.

Now while I am willing to sing them praises when deserved, I also think that we should be vocal when they cross the line. If you paid attention to the launch of their expertise sharing website Knol, you probably saw a great deal of controversy coming together.

Knol is basically a Wikipedia clone, with some different features. One contributor, for example, can write several articles on the same topic (Squidoo style).

The main problem with this initiative, as many people have highlighted, is that fact that Google apparently is entering into the content business, creating a huge conflict of interest.

In the past Google executives have clearly stated to the web community that they would never enter into the content business. That was a required reassurance, else they would start competing directly with their partners (i.e. websites that appear on Google’s index, and websites that are part of the AdSense network).

Looks like they forgot about that reassurance.

Here is an example of how Knol could compete with About.com (property of the New York Times):

About.com authors and contributors decide to give Knol a shot, and start putting their articles there
Google gives high trust to Knol articles, and starts ranking them high on the search results
The Knol articles of those authors and contributes start getting good traffic
The authors and contributors put AdSense on the their Knol page (Google already allows that)
Authors and contributors start making good money, and decide to write more on Knol and leave About.com
The cycle repeats and reinforces itself, Knol starts to spread through the search results, and Adsense income soars
The New York Times gets pissed off, but there is nothing much it can do about it

Now keep in mind that this example applies to any content publisher. Even bloggers. Suppose you blog about pink mobile phones, and you have the first result for that keyword on Google. Then someones decides to create a Knol page about pink mobile phones, and Google starts ranking that Knol page higher than yours (just because its their platform). Your search traffic would go down the drain (and possibly your money too, if you were monetizing the website).

Looks like a fantasy scenario, but it is not that much of a stretch. Danny Sullivan from Search Engine Land has been conduction some tests with Knol pages, and the results are surprising. 30% of all the Knol pages that he created for test pages were ranking on the first page of Google’s results after one day.

Aaron Wall also proved that with some backlinks involved a Knol page that duplicates a page of an existing web page will outrank the original.

I am not sure about you, but I don’t feel comfortable with that at all.

So what is your opinion, is Google trying to enter the content business with Knol? If so, do you think this is OK, or do you think they are crossing a line and should think better before going forward?

Open Discussion: Are Mini Niche Websites Dying?

2008-11-14T05:34:00.000-08:00

Last week I came across an interesting post on the SEO Black Hat blog that talked about black holes. No, not the astronomy ones, but the SEO ones! Quoting the article:

Black Hole SEO employs a technique that causes the normal laws of Google Physics to break down. Link juice flows into a massive body, but can never escape. When employed on a massive body, it tends to dominate the SERPs.

A black hole site is created when an tier 1 authority site ceases to link out to other sites. If a reference is needed, the information is rewritten and a reference page is created within the black hole. All (or virtually all) external links on the site are made nofollow.

As you probably guessed, the most famous example of an SEO black hole is Wikipedia. The problem is that many mainstream websites are following the same route (e.g., NY Times, Business Week). Even some popular blogs — which we would expect to have more willingness to pass the link love — are starting to use those black hole techniques to avoid linking out as often as possible (e.g., TechCrunch with their “Company Profile” pages).

The problem with this pattern is that it reinforces that popularity of the big guys, while making it harder for the small kids to play. Ever heard the saying “the rich get richer and the poor get poorer”?

On a follow-up post, Quadszilla claims that this phenomenon could put a bane on the “mini niche websites” strategy. That is, you would be better off trying to create 1 or 2 mega websites rather than trying to create 100 mini niche websites.

Now this is certainly a controversial issue, because as of today you still have hundreds (if not thousands) of webmasters and online marketers that swear by the efficiency and profitability of creating mini niche websites.

Personally I stand on the fence here. I think that both strategies could work, and both have advantages and disadvantages. In fact I employ both of them. I have a couple of large websites (Daily Blog Tips being one of them), but I also develop mini niche websites from time to time.

But what about you? Do you agree with Quadszilla that mini niche websites are on the way out? Or do you think that this online strategy will still be working years down the road? Speak your mind!

Another PageRank Update Already?

2008-11-14T05:32:00.000-08:00

Looks like Google is increase the frequency of the nominal Pagerank updates. The last one happened exactly two months ago, there are rumors that the new one is taking place this weekend.

The clue is coming again from Mr. Matt Cutts. He stated the following on a comment on his blog two days ago:

I wouldn’t be surprised if new PageRanks started showing up this weekend or so.

Personally I find it weird to release a second PR update two months after the latest one. If you remember well, last year we passed almost 6 months without seeing one. Perhaps Google is tweaking their algorithm, so they need to update things more frequently?

Google Webmaster Chat Happening Today: Register Up

2008-11-14T05:31:00.000-08:00

The guys from Google Webmaster Central announced that they will be having an open chat session today. The session should last 1 hour and 15 minutes, and here is what they will cover:

INTRO: A quick hello from some of your favorite Help Group Guides
PRESO: A 15 minute presentation on “Frightening Myths and Misconceptions” by John Mueller
FAQs: A return of our popular “Three for Three,” in which we’ll have three different Googlers tackling three different issues we’ve seen come up in the Group recently… in under three minutes each!
And lots of Q&A! You’ll have a chance to type questions during the entire session (actually, starting an hour prior!) using our hunky-dory new Google Moderator tool. Ask, then vote! With this tool and your insights, we expect the most interesting questions to quickly float to the top.

Matt Cutts and a couple of other Googlers will be there answering questions as well. The chat will take place today at 5pm GMT time (9am PDT and noon EDT). You can register for free on this link.

If you don’t have time, don’t worry, I will be there and if enough interesting things pop up I will write a summary later on.

IM Broadcast: YouTube for Internet Marketers

2008-11-14T05:30:00.000-08:00

Loren Baker from Search Engine Journal emailed me today to let me know that he is launching a new website called IM Broadcast. What is it about? It is basically a YouTube for Internet marketers.

I think the concept is interesting and has good potential. Sphinn did pretty much the same thing, launching a “Digg for Internet marketers” a while ago, and they are growing quite healthy.

What kind of videos will you find here? Pretty much anything related to Internet marketing, from conference speeches to SEO and social media.

They don’t have a huge collection of videos yet, but it is the launch week after all. Over the time I am sure it will become a valuable resource for anyone looking for Internet marketing related videos, so keep it mind.

Try the RankSense SEO Software for 30 Days Free

2008-11-14T05:25:00.000-08:00

The guys from RankSense are having a promotional campaign where you can subscribe for an account with a 90-days money back guarantee (and it won’t be charged for the first 30 days).

So what is RankSense? It is an all-in-one SEO software that brings 12 integrated tools to optimize most aspects on your blog or website. I exchanged some emails with Hamlet Batista, the creator of the software, and the guy knows his SEO. He has made millions of dollars in search marketing and affiliate marketing deals, in very competitive niches like the Viagra one, just to give you an idea.

Here is what you will find inside the software:

an advanced keywords research tool (search for keywords related to your content, to your competitors, by topic and so on)
keyword analysis (estimated traffic, competition and so on)
competition analysis tool
website SEO check (the software will scan your websites to see if the essential SEO factors are there)
link structure analysis (where your links come from, what anchor text they have and so on)
link building tool (what are the best places to get links)

The interesting thing about the RankSense software is that their approach is towards simplicity and time saving. Some SEO tools there are really complex and have steep learning curves. RankSense, on the other hand, was developed to be as user friendly as possibly, so even beginners can work on their SEO efficiently.

You can try it for yourself though and see if you like. They require a credit card on the registration, but you won’t be charged for 30 days. If you find that the software is not what you were looking for, you just need to cancel before the first 30 days and you are good to go. Their basic plan starts at $25 monthly as well, which is considerably cheaper than some competitors. Click here to check the sales page with the registration link.